TTC: Bloor Danforth Line 2 West Extension(s)

[doady]

1. Finish stub Sheppard Line
2. Replace RT with HRT
3. Submerge all streetcarlines underground in the downtown core.
4. DRL phase 1.
5. Scarborough streetcar grid.
6. DRL extension - Eglington/East York
7. Finch LRT/streetcar.
8 Yonge Looping with spadina line at hwy 7 or steeles
9 DRL extension eastern extension into etobicoke
10MT LRT network, first on hwy10, then on dundas/and or burnathorpe

You would build a subway along Hwy 7 before an LRT along Hurontario? I think that's the problem here, that people put Mississauga on the same level of Vaughan, MCC is no better than VCC, or perhaps a little worse.

And please stop trying to make Mississauga seem very new developed. A lot of the Dundas and Hurontario corridors were developed in the 60's and 70's. Some of the office buildings around Square One were built in the 50's. East and central Mississauga is not suburban in the same way that Vaughan is, and I don't mean only because of the time it was developed.

I think all MCC really needs is a subway along the busiest part of Hurontario, from Eglinton to Dundas, connecting with MCC, the transitway and the GO Train. It wouldn't cost much more than any diversion of the Milton line, if at all, and it would be far more useful. It would add many more passengers to the Milton line without interfering with the existing train service and facilities; it would replace the local bus service with something much better, and speed up and enhance development along the corridor.

 

[cdl42]

"Some of the office buildings around Square One were built in the 50's"

Okay, that's gotta be impossible. Burnhamthorpe and Hurontario are almost guaranteed to have been dirt roads back in the 50s. There was nothing there but farms until the 70s.

"It wouldn't cost much more than any diversion of the Milton line, if at all, and it would be far more useful."

How would it be far more useful? A proper re-route of the Milton line could serve all the areas that a subway extension could PLUS the parts of Mississauga beyond MCC (including the major Meadowvale employment mode) PLUS without causing capacity issues further down the Bloor line (which is already very busy) PLUS offer a faster ride PLUS for less money.

 

[roch5220]

And please stop trying to make Mississauga seem very new developed. A lot of the Dundas and Hurontario corridors were developed in the 60's and 70's

Population of Mississauga

1970 52,186
1975 234,975
1980 298,045
1985 365,300
1990 446,000
1995 528,000
2000 610,700
2005 697,800

I don't know. For a city, the population stats tend to make me believe that the city is newly developed. That goes with my basic recollection from 1978-1995 when I lived there of the mass development going on between that period. Or maybe I could measure it by how many lanes hurontatio has been widened.

The only reason why I would consider hwy 7 for subway is for the loop. Personally, I don't care if it was at steeles. And you realize I never even mentioned VCC.

Doady, I don't understand your fascination with Mississauga getting a subway. Its not going to make Mississauga 'world class'. Nor is the demand presently there to warrent it. Yes ridership would increase, but so would ridership increase if new lines/extension were created elsewhere. Mississauga should follow its own transit specific policy/plan instead of trying to be an end point in Toronto's.

 

[doady]

Okay, that's gotta be impossible. Burnhamthorpe and Hurontario are almost guaranteed to have been dirt roads back in the 50s. There was nothing there but farms until the 70s.

Whoops I meant the 60's.

How would it be far more useful? A proper re-route of the Milton line could serve all the areas that a subway extension could PLUS the parts of Mississauga beyond MCC (including the major Meadowvale employment mode)

A Hurontario subway would be a local transit service, not a commuter transit service. It would more useful simply because it actually serves the Hurontario corridor. If people use it to connect to the Milton line, then it is just as useful for getting to far-away destinations as a Milton Line diversion.

PLUS without causing capacity issues further down the Bloor line (which is already very busy) PLUS offer a faster ride PLUS for less money.

The Milton line is the one with capacity issues, requiring billions of dollars in upgrades, which is why any diversion of it is a waste of money. Not only is the diversion expensive for so little service, it is redundant since would also overlap with the Hurontario LRT and the Mississauga Transitway.

Also when I say a Hurontario subway, I don't mean like Toronto's subways. Since it would be operate by MT, it could simply be a cheaper underground LRT, it doesn't have to have similar specifications with Toronto's subways. MT could then build a network of LRT lines with the same gauge, vehicles, etc., including along Dundas, underground between Kipling and Hurontario and above ground west of Hurontario.

Population of Mississauga

1970 52,186
1975 234,975
1980 298,045
1985 365,300
1990 446,000
1995 528,000
2000 610,700
2005 697,800

I don't know. For a city, the population stats tend to make me believe that the city is newly developed. That goes with my basic recollection from 1978-1995 when I lived there of the mass development going on between that period. Or maybe I could measure it by how many lanes hurontatio has been widened.

Different parts of the city were built in different time periods. I am not sure why this is so hard to understand. Population stats for the whole city don't tell us which areas are older than others.

Doady, I don't understand your fascination with Mississauga getting a subway. Its not going to make Mississauga 'world class'. Nor is the demand presently there to warrent it. Yes ridership would increase, but so would ridership increase if new lines/extension were created elsewhere. Mississauga should follow its own transit specific policy/plan instead of trying to be an end point in Toronto's.

The main problem is that people here are too fixated on an arbitrary boundary and not realize Toronto is not separate from the rest of the GTA, and not be able to distinguish between different areas of the 905.

 

[cdl42]

"The Milton line is the one with capacity issues, requiring billions of dollars in upgrades"

Or, in other terms, a highly proven and popular transportation corridor deserving of millions or even billions of dollars in upgrades. Replacing the dozens of train-bus trips operated every day due to the out-of-control popularity of the line would likely save money in the long run.

Unlike, for example, the planned Mississauga busway.

 

[roch5220]

Different parts of the city were built in different time periods. I am not sure why this is so hard to understand. Population stats for the whole city don't tell us which areas are older than others.

Fair enough, but the same argument holds true for other areas around the GTA like Markham and Oakville. The population of Markham in 1971 was 36K, are you telling me that Markham isn't relatively new either because they have old parts of that city as well? The old parts of Mississauga were like little towns back then, hardly an argument for what you are trying use it as.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

"How would it be far more useful? A proper re-route of the Milton line could serve all the areas that a subway extension could PLUS the parts of Mississauga beyond MCC (including the major Meadowvale employment mode) PLUS without causing capacity issues further down the Bloor line (which is already very busy) PLUS offer a faster ride PLUS for less money."

That's why we need to give GO some cash right now to see if all these plusses can be turned into a reality (and surely most of them can without too much trouble). The Milton via MCC line could probably be up and running quicker, too. I still think the subway extension would be useful for some people, but we won't know exactly how many - i.e. enough to justify extending it - until after GO is boosted and until Mississauga totally runs out of greenfields and starts redeveloping non-MCC areas. I'm thinking long-term...we might really want it in 50 years.

"3. Submerge all streetcarlines underground in the downtown core."

I think a subway to Barrie would be cheaper...and you'd do this before the DRL?

 

[unimaginative2]

The whole point of the DRL is that it eliminates the need for subways on Queen or even to replace other streetcar lines. Longer distance trips from, say, Parkdale or the Queensway to downtown could be served by the DRL, leaving the streetcars, perhaps with some priority measures, to serve shorter local trips for which they are infinitely better suited. I have no doubt that it would attract many people in the Beach and west end back to transit. Witness the dramatic declines in ridership over the years on the Queen line.

A Queen subway and DRL would be a little redundant. It wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea in the future, but that kind of duplication would only be sensible after a lot of other lines are complete, including extensions out to the suburbs.

One of the biggest benefits of building the DRL is that it would take a lot of traffic away from the Yonge line and Yonge-Bloor station, allowing extensions of the Yonge line north.

 

[adma]

Re the Square One zone: going into the "establishment" of Mississauga in '68, I reckon that the most might have been some rudimentary token bungaloid exurbia around Fairview Road, some nascent industry around Mavis, the Credit Woodlands subdivision further west, Applewood further east...the Mississauga Valley tract was only developed in the 70s...other than gas stations and maybe even branch banks and the like, I'd say there was practically *nothing* around here...

 

[dashingdan]

I find it interesting that some people say that the GTA is one entity, but then other people say "let Mississauga build its own transit".
If anything, Mississauga is the city in the GTA most like the other former cities that now make up the city of Toronto. Lest we forget, part of Mississauga used to be called Toronto Township.

Anyhow, I'd be all for diverting the Milton line to the MCC. But that strikes me as more of a pipe dream than a subway extension to MCC. A Milton tunnel would require damn tall tunnels. Remember GO transit uses bilevels people! Of course GO couse use shorter trains if they had service every 10 minutes instead of every 20 minutes during rush hour. And to build a tunnel along Hurontario to MCC and back to Erindale, you'd have to actually run trains to replace the buses, cuz otherwise the cost wouldn't be justified, using an expensive tunnel JUST for the 6 train trips to toronto and the 6 train trips back.

that said (if that made any sense), i much prefer taking go than mt/ttc, but go service is pricey, and i'd rather take a train than a bus. and there's the difficulty of adding more trains to the milton line due to crankiness on canadian pacific's part

 

[jeicow]

Population of Mississauga
1970 52,186
1975 234,975
1980 298,045
1985 365,300
1990 446,000
1995 528,000
2000 610,700
2005 697,800

You're 1970 numbers are misleading. In 1970 it was still the TOWN of Mississauga and didn't include either Port Credit or Streetsville which were both the major population hubs of the time which is why there is such a huge jump in population. Yout other numbers seem accurate though.

Okay, that's gotta be impossible. Burnhamthorpe and Hurontario are almost guaranteed to have been dirt roads back in the 50s. There was nothing there but farms until the 70s.

Actually, the first office building opened in MCC in 68/69, which later became the Mississauga City Hall until the new one opened and was later demolished in the 80s to make way for the CIBC building (?).
The Toronto suburban railway also served the area and went through the site during the 1910s/20s until it's demise. The tracks stuck around for a while until the Carr family bought the former land and the tracks seem to have disappeared after that.

 

[adma]

You're 1970 numbers are misleading. In 1970 it was still the TOWN of Mississauga and didn't include either Port Credit or Streetsville which were both the major population hubs of the time which is why there is such a huge jump in population. Yout other numbers seem accurate though.

Even as "major population hubs", they would only have added about 15-20 thousand to the total. So if we take these numbers at face value, it still more than tripled in that period...

 

[jeicow]

Even as "major population hubs", they would only have added about 15-20 thousand to the total. So if we take these numbers at face value, it still more than tripled in that period...

From The City of Mississauga Website:

You may need to check your math skills buddy because there is NO way 172,352 goes into 250,017 three times. The population may have doubled-sure-but there is no way it could have tripled. Your inaccurate 1970 figure, like I stated before, is misleading- now more so because is wasn't even close to being accurate. I realize my number is for 1971 (a census year) while the "figure" you presented was for 1970 so unless you can prove that the population grew by 120,000 in one year, faster I believe than the current rate the GTA is growing by.

 

[adma]

Don't address me with that; address that original post which cited "52,186" as the 1970 number (which even I doubted; thus, "if we take these numbers at face value", etc). But as you see, I was correct on PC/Streetsville; in 1971, it was 16,282. Add that to 52,186, and that makes 68,468. So yes, *regarding the numbers given in the post you were quoting*, that = "more than tripling" en route to 234,975.

I'm not claiming it was a correct figure--heck, if it was, Toronto Township/Mississauga would have lost over 40 thou btw/1966 and 1970.

But remember what you said in your earlier post...

You're 1970 numbers are misleading. In 1970 it was still the TOWN of Mississauga and didn't include either Port Credit or Streetsville which were both the major population hubs of the time which is why there is such a huge jump in population.

So, as you see, you were claiming it was because PC/Streetsville were missing, not because it was an inaccurate figure--period. (And exclusive of PC/Streetsville, the "Town of Mississauga" still roughly corresponds to today's City of Mississauga, other than some then-rural land given to Brampton and taken from Oakville in '73...)

 

[doady]

Mississauga, looking south from Hurontario and Central Parkway, in 1970